Blackstone’s St. Charles Porter won second place in the Brown Porter category. It was the 8th win at GABF for the St. Charles Porter and Blackstone’s 12th medal since 1996.

No other brewery in Tennessee took home medals in Denver this year, and no Mississippi or Arkansas breweries were winners.

The 2013 Great American Beer Festival competition, which awarded 252 medals, is the largest commercial beer competition in the world. In its 27th year, the 2013 competition surpassed all previous participation records.

Award-winning brewers received gold, silver and bronze medals in 84 beer categories covering 138 different beer styles (encompassing subcategories), establishing the best examples of each style in the U.S. Winners were chosen from 4,809 competition entries from 745 breweries, hailing from 49 states, plus Washington, D.C.

A crowd of 2,000 beer lovers converged Saturday on AutoZone Park for the 4th Annual Memphis Brewfest, a celebration of American craft beers and international brews.

The 2013 festival, with more than 165 different beers sampled, was a big success. It rained, and the Grizzlies were playing the Clippers in Game 3 of the playoffs a few blocks away at FedExForum, and the festival still sold out on Saturday morning. Thankfully, there was covered space for all the booths in the concourse area of AutoZone Park, so everyone could stay dry.

The festival capped off the inaugural Memphis Beer Week, with beer tastings, beer dinners, firkin nights and pint nights all across town.

Memphis’ High Cotton Brewing, which has just started brewing at its new facility on Monroe, had samples of its Saison and Scottish Ale at Memphis Brewfest.

The Bluff City Brewers & Connoisseurs served up some great homebrew, including the “High C’s” IPA, Extracurricular Hoptivity IPA, Rauch Me Like a Hurricane and Strange Fruit Watermelon Wheat, just to name a few.

In addition to its year-round beers, Nashville’s Yazoo Brewing Company had two special beers on tap — a barrel-aged version of its Sly Rye Porter, as well as the New Belgium sour collaboration “Rufus.”

Yazoo also gave away this awesome custom big wheel to this lucky guy.

The mission of Memphis Brewfest is to raise awareness of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. All net proceeds from the festival benefit Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy and the Memphis Redbirds Foundation.

Budweiser of Memphis has released the schedule for the 2013 Memphis Beer Week, and it’s going to be nothing short of amazing.

The inaugural celebration of craft beer goodness is April 21-27, culminating in the 4th annual Memphis Brewfest at Autozone Park.

The week is so full of beer events, you’ll have to pick and choose which ones to attend. The highlights include a New Belgium/Yazoo Brewing collaboration sour beer, a special Ghost River porter, tastings at grocery and liquor stores, beer dinners, firkin nights, pint nights, you name it.

Flying Saucer Downtown – Sour Hour Event, 4 p.m. Tapping the New Belgium/Yazoo Collaboration sour beer. Plus we will have Wayan Sour, New Belgium La Folie, Yazoo Sour Saison. All beers will be paired with local deserts from bakeries and pastry shops.

Flying Saucer Cordova – Sour Hour Event, 6 p.m. Tapping the New Belgium/Yazoo Collaboration sour beer. Plus we will have Wayan Sour, New Belgium La Folie, Yazoo Sour Saison. All beers will be paired with local deserts from bakeries and pastry shops.

Young Avenue Deli – Tapping the New Belgium/Yazoo Brewing Co. collaboration sour beer at 6 p.m. Reps from New Belgium and Yazoo will be in the bar to talk about the collaboration. Then there will be a Stone Brewing Co. event at 7 p.m., with tappings of Cali-Belgie, Old Guardian, Double Arrogant Bastard. Stone reps will be on hand to talk about the beers.

Aldo’s Pizza Pies – Ghost River Noble Prized Porter tapping at 5 p.m. Come be one of the first in the city to try this great beer produced for Memphis Beer Week by Ghost River Brewing.

Sharky’s – Ghost River Noble Prized Porter and fixed-priced menu, all week long. The restaurant will be tapping up this limited beer-week release and pairing it with a menu item for a set price, available all week. Come try it out.

Young Avenue Deli – Tapping Ghost River Noble Prized Porter, 6 p.m. Come out and try this wonderful brew created by Chuck Skypeck for Memphis Beer Week at one of Memphis’s premier craft beer destinations. Also tapping three Stone beers with reps in store for sampling.

Flying Saucer Downtown – Memphis Brewfest live remote, featuring festival organizer Martin Daniel. Come out and say thanks to the man that puts together this wonderful event every year, and have a pint with us. Also, will be tapping an Abita Vanilla Double Dog firkin, with sampling in store, hosted by an Abita Brewing rep.

Local Midtown – New Belgium food and beer pairing. Local is featuring a special chef’s appetizer consisting of Crab Toast with Sweet Thai Chili for $8. You can add a New Belgium Rolle Bolle or Ranger IPA with it for $10. This will run from 5 p.m.-close.

Café Society – Belgian Beer Dinner, presented by Austin Sawyer and David Spafford, 7 p.m. This event will feature a wonderful Belgian beer lineup that includes Hoegarden, Stella Artois, Chimay, Palm and Leffe (not available in the State). All of these fine beers will be paired perfectly with authentic Belgian cuisine.

New tanks arrived at Blackstone Brewing Company this week that will allow the Nashville craft brewery to increase capacity by 60 percent.

Blackstone received three new tanks (two fermentation and one bright tank) with nominal capacity of 120 barrels each. They were fabricated by the W.M. Sprinkman Corp. in Elroy, Wisconsin.

Here’s more from Blackstone:

Our current fermentation capacity is 390 barrels and this will increase that by about 60% to 630 barrels. Our annual capacity will increase from 10,000 barrels to 16,000 barrels. For 2013 we will use this capacity to support the growth of our core brands, four seasonal brands and one high gravity brand in the existing markets. In addition we will bring out new brands, HopJack IPA in and a new high gravity brand in early spring. Assuming that we can satisfy our current markets, we plan to expand our brands to the remaining Tennessee markets first and then to limited markets in Kentucky and Alabama. Our capacity will also be used to support existing contract brewing arrangements. Within the next two months we will place an order for two additional tanks for delivery in the summer of 2013 which will boost our fermentation capacity to 750 barrels giving us annual capacity of 19,000 barrels.

In October, Blackstone celebrated a milestone by capping its one millionth bottle since opening a bottling line in the summer of 2011.

Blackstone is growing! This is #1 of 3 new tanks going in today. That means 60% more beer can be brewed for you! twitter.com/BlackstoneBrew…